A transcript comprises a textual record of words that are uttered by one or more speakers or are otherwise audible. A transcript based on one or more audio components of an audio or audiovisual recording can be indexed to the recording so as to correlate words to particular points in time of the media recording. Various computer-based tools can support entry and use of indexed transcripts using data representing the words of the transcript and associating the words of the transcript with suitable time stamps or index values indicating the position of the words relative to one another and/or the recording. This may facilitate, for example, searching for words or phrases of interest in the transcript and accessing the recording for playback or other use at a point in the recording corresponding to the time stamp(s) of the words of interest.
If a user edits a portion of the transcript data, the user may make undesired changes to other portions of the transcript data that may make the transcript less usable or less reliable—for example, adding or removing words may cause words of the transcript (whether newly-added or not) to lack meaningful time codes.